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weeknotes

CX – Weeknote #218 – 5th May 2023

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I had a shorter week this week, as there was a bank holiday and I took a day’s leave.

The rest of the week was spent in London doing Customer Experience training.

My top tweet this week was this one.

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Personalising – Weeknote #214 – 7th April 2023

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Shorter week this week due to the Easter holiday.

Attended the Wonkhe and Adobe Education Espresso online event – Curriculum for the whole person. There was an excellent presentation from Hull University.

I spent most of the week in London working in our London office.

Wrote up notes for internal and external use on the Senior Education and Student Experience Group meeting. I also updated CRM for those that attended the Senior Education and Student Experience Group meeting. Spent time planning logistics and informing for (next) Senior Education and Student Experience Group Meeting on 21st April.

lecture theatre
Image by Wokandapix from Pixabay

Had a meeting on a possible Learning Spaces session for Connect More. In the end I recognised what I wanted from the session and how I would like to run it, wasn’t aligned. So, I dropped myself from the session. From a strategic perspective, I want a learning spaces session at Connect More, this doesn’t mean I need to deliver such a session.

Planning a meeting with SURF sharing notes on the concepts of the Smart Campus and the Intelligent Campus.

Went down to Portsmouth, to look at a city campus. I am planning some reports on the smart city, civic university, belonging. I wanted some inspiration for a place I had not visited before.

Spent time planning and inviting colleagues to some internal personalisation workshops. This will be followed by some external workshops.  We are doing this as part of a strategic target that we will undertake and publish research into the concept of personalised learning and what it could mean for higher education.

I was supporting our events team with invitations for people to present at Connect More.

Thursday, we had our monthly sector strategy leads meeting.

Had to spend some time planning travel and accommodation for April and May. I am off to LILAC 23, UCISA’s Spotlight 23, as well as some internal training in London.

My top tweet this week was this one.

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A Hard Day’s Night – Weeknote #212 – 24th March 2023

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Royal Albert Dock

Monday I was in London at the Jisc offices in Fetter Lane. We had our Senior Education and Student Experience Group Meeting with 12 PVCs (including a VC and DVCs). As you might expect ChatGPT and AI was a hot topic of conversation in the meeting.

After the meeting I was heading up to London for the UCISA Leadership Conference in Liverpool.

I did some sketch notes while I was up there.

I did enjoy the conference, not sure if I enjoyed it as much as the previous year, but it was still an excellent conference. Various sessions got me thinking, and I am contemplating writing some of my thoughts up from the conference.

The equality, diversity, and inclusion sessions were interesting and useful. Why don’t universities try and be more flexible in their recruitment practices, for example how many offer term time only contracts (reduced hours) to attract working parents. Family friendly policies can widen the talent pool. Why are so many jobs 37.5 hrs 52 weeks? Also why is it so often that recruitment for an individual, rather than recruiting for the team. A more diverse team is often more effective.

Was a little disappointed that one of the opening sessions talked about digital natives. They don’t exist, never have.

Wondered if any university was looking at implementing a four day week?

This BBC news article reflects on the experiences of those involved in a four day week trial.

The scheme, organised by 4 Day Week Global, took place between June and December 2022, and involved organisations across the UK, including some non-profit organisations, as well as private firms in recruitment, software, and manufacturing. A report assessing its impact has found it had “extensive benefits” particularly for employees’ well-being.

I spent time reviewing the Connect More 2023 themes and topics with others across Jisc.

Started reflecting on possible ideas for ALT-C 2023 now that the call for papers is out. In 2021 I did a blog post about the digital lens, based on earlier work, so looking at possibly revisiting this.

Continued my researching AI in education. Have had early access to Bard, which looks very good.

Saw this on the Twitter – Fake Trump arrest photos trigger a new AI panic. The quality of AI images is getting better and better, and as you might expect, the images they are creating can be problematic.

Spent time writing and reviewing some ideas for next year, including looking at the rumoured Apple Reality Pro.

Final comment, often we know where we are, and where we want to be. The harder job is working out how to get there. What do we need to do to make it happen. How do we get there?

My top tweet this week was this one.

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London’s Calling – Weeknote #209 – 3rd March 2023

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I spent some time in London this week. I hadn’t been to our London offices for a while and with plenty of events in my diary for the next few weeks, I wouldn’t otherwise be getting there in a while.

I am planning a range of meetings, workshops, and events over the next few months. I am also attending a few events and conferences as well. Throw in some training days and away days, it wasn’t long before something went wrong. There is one week now where I need to be at three different things, in three different places, with three different organisations. Yup, I need to think again.

Had a meeting with Dom Pates about our fireside chat next week at Digifest.

The revised guide to the intelligent campus was published on the Jisc website.

Wrote What is the intelligent campus blog post for web team.

campus
Image by 小亭 江 from Pixabay

Getting ahead of myself I spent time producing slides for Senior Education and Student Experience Group Meeting happening later in March. I also designed and developed a brown paper workshop for the same meeting.

My top tweet this week was this one.

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The lights are on – Weeknote #202 – 13th January 2023

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Monday I was working from home, spent some time planning for the week ahead. I spent much of the week up in London attending meetings in our Fetter Lane office.

I published a blog post about university spaces and wellbeing.

Could we use space utilisation data to support wellbeing? As students frequent and move about the campus, the spaces in which they study, learn and relax can have an impact on their wellbeing.

Had a meeting about some potential sessions at Jisc’s Digifest that I may present on.

Wednesday I was part of a meeting talking about risk. I have participated in risk meetings and importantly risk mitigation many times over the years. I remember undertaking a risk assessment on the external hosting of our VLE. I was asked by an auditor, what would we do if the server room in London (which hosted our VLE) flooded. Well we would switch to the alternate servers in Wiltshire. I was then asked what would we do if that server was taken out as well. As a group we decided that if both London and Wiltshire were taken out, then we would probably have more important problems to worry about than if the VLE was running or not. Though, if that did happen, we could restore the VLE from a backup on our own servers and get it running again that way.

On Thursday we had our Quarterly Leadership Team Away Day, much of what was taken up with a conversation and discussion with our CEO about the strategy, planning and moving forward.

Friday I attended the DfE HE Sector emergency planning liaison group where we discussed the potential impact of blackouts and cyber threats. I have written before, in October, about the potential impact of loss of power on student learning.

So how do students do online and digital learning without electricity or even connectivity? The news is full of stories on the possibility of winter blackouts as the energy crisis continues to hit home. With the continuing prospect of restrictions in gas supplies across Europe, there is a strong chance with a extreme cold spell in the UK that there will be power rationing. This means that some parts of the UK will be dark. Students will face learning without light, power, heat or connectivity. What can universities do to prepare for this potential likelihood? How can you deliver high quality online learning without power or connectivity?

In the post I explored some of the preparations that universities might want to consider if there was going to power outages.

At the time of writing the risk is low, so we are unlikely to see blackouts.

Jisc published a comment about ChatGPT and assessment.

ChatGPT and its ability to produce high quality essays with minimal human input has created a flurry in the UK education sector and many are questioning whether this signals the end of the essay as a primary mode of assessing learners.

One of the (now not so) little people got a new 10th generation iPad for Christmas. He asked if he could borrow my first generation Apple Pencil to do some drawing on his iPad. Having purchased an USB-C to Lighting adapter from the Apple Store in Bristol to connect a first generation Apple Pencil to a 10th generation iPad, I think there might be a problem with the pencil. It seemed to be failing to hold a charge, despite being connected and fast charging from the 10th generation iPad. Reading the web it looks like that as I haven’t used the pencil in a while, the battery has died. Though I had given up hope, my son hadn’t. While I was away for work, he tried once more to charge the pencil, and low and behold, it charged up, it paired and is working well with the 10th generation iPad.

It’s alive I tell you, alive!

My top tweet this week was this one.

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Ich bin ein Berliner – Weeknote #196 – 2nd December 2022

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Spent most of the week in Berlin for the Moving Target Conference.

I was at our London office on Monday. We had a team coaching session looking at our internal and external stakeholders.

On Tuesday I flew out to Berlin from Heathrow. When I was invited to the conference I did consider catching the train to Berlin, but after doing some research I found out it was going to take in excess of 20 hours and required not just changes (which I expected) but actually would entail taking a bus for part of the journey. So despite some reservations decided to fly. I would have preferred to fly from Bristol, but there were no direct flights to Berlin, so in the end flew from Heathrow.

Travelling to Terminal 5 from my hotel, I took an autonomous pod. These pods are for those parking at a car park, but were also available to hotel residents.

The conference was excellent and I enjoyed attending. It’s useful to see education from a different perspective.

The conference had a focus on trans-national education.  There were some interesting panel sessions and presentations. I did a few sketch notes on various presentations and panel sessions.

Here is my sketch note of trust and reputation in the digital economy with Prof. Timm Teubner.

I delivered my keynote on the Friday.

Making the transformation happen: The UK higher education digital transformation journey

The UK higher education sector has over the last three decades invested heavily in information technology, online solutions, digital services, resources and content. The aim has been to enhance and improve and reframe the student experience, to reimagine learning, teaching and assessment, and to transform the infrastructure, the university estate to enable and enhance this digital transformation. Across this, Jisc, the UK national research and education network, has been proving the infrastructure, security, advice and guidance to the UK higher education sector. In this keynote, James Clay Head of Higher Education and Student Experience at Jisc, will explore what we mean by digital transformation, what it means for students and why the UK higher education sector needs to deliver on their digital transformation journey. He will explore the UK experience over the last few years and how this has helped to accelerate the digital transformation journey and will showcase exemplars from across the UK university sector. He will discuss how Jisc is supporting UK higher education and what are plans are for the future in enabling future digital transformation and what our colleagues can learn from our experiences and those of the UK higher education sector.

There was an online audience as well as people in the room.

The conference was at the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences).

The building still had the scars from the fighting in 1945.

It was a great venue for a conference, with good spaces. I also appreciated the fact that the building had eduroam, so connecting to the wifi was quick and easy.

I get a mention in the closing comments about my sketchnoting and tweets on the conference.

Saw this Twitter thread. Really useful list of locations in London for working and reading, where you don’t need to buy endless cups of coffee.

Read this paper COVID, Campus, Cameras, Communication, and Connection by Jasmine Price, Donna Lanclos and Lawrie Phipps.

This article discusses insights from two separate and linked projects. A staff-facing project at a UK university in the English Midlands, took place in late Spring 2020. We heard at that time a concern from staff for students who were not in touch and were not “visible” due to their absence from digital places as well as the more obvious physical ones. Staff also discussed their sense that, from the students who were in contact, there were a lot more emails and one-on-one discussions about logistics and worries. In Spring 2021, at a university in the north of England, we conducted a student-facing project intended to discover their lived experience of the 2020-21 academic year, as well as surface insights into what the phrase “back to campus” might mean for these students. Students struggled with what their lecturers were asking in terms of visibility (especially cameras). Students were also concerned about building and maintaining connections. The desire for effective and transparent communication in a time of crisis was also expressed. We juxtapose the rhetoric about “back to campus” and assumptions embedded in policies around cameras and digital participation with the expressed desires of students for human relationships and care in a time of uncertainty and upheaval. We end with implications for institutions going forward, with the certainty that this will not be the last time, as a sector, when we have to rely primarily on digital places and platforms for the work of the University.

Well worth downloading and reading.

My top tweet this week was this one.

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Another one – Weeknote #191 – 28th October 2022

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This week we saw our third prime minister this year take office and a new cabinet and another new education secretary. So how long to the next one then?

Well I go on leave last week and come back to a full and bursting inbox (which was empty when I left) with over 140 emails to read, review, and act upon.

I had some more thoughts about what universities could do in the event of blackouts or on the impact of the energy crisis on changing student behaviour.

I spent most of the week in London.

I had some discussions on future content (what we use to call thought leadership) that would inspire digital transformation, provide insights into current practice and imagine what the future possibilities are. As a result, I spent some time scoping out some concepts and ideas on what this could look like, across our HE strategy.

Our HE strategy says for example

We will, in partnership with universities, develop approaches and digital solutions to improve and enhance the student experience and greater equity in access and participation in the UK and abroad.

If we think about insight, this is what is happening now, case studies, exemplars, commentary from sector, review, what good looks like now. So, for an insight into enhancing the student experience, university could explain how they are reviewing the student journey, so  to enable them to use digital tools and services to enhance the student experience.

As for inspiration, this is what you could do in the near term, what you need to do to achieve the potential of digital and technology, what good could look like in the next 2-5 years. So, an overview of the near future student journey illustrated with specific examples from the sector of how digital solutions are enhancing and improving that experience.

As for the future, we can imagine through horizon scanning, visions for the future, what good would look like in the next 5-10 years, what could be different, why would it be different. An example of this could be the 2035 student experience? How can digital and data enhance that experience and what does this mean for universities?

What was important to me, was to provide some scope and ideas on what we could do, not necessarily what we will do. Across the strategic themes and the concepts of insight, inspire and imagine, there are lots of opportunities for developing inspirational transformative content. Of course this had to be all backed up with toolkits, frameworks, support, advice and guidance, and a range of products and services that enable all of this.

On Tuesday I had a planning meeting, which demonstrated the importance of underpinning foundations and a clear vision to enable functional and effective planning.

One of my reasons for being in London, apart from some meeting was to undertake some research and ideation in the Intelligent Campus space. This involved some conversations, desk research, and field work across various campuses (in this case) across London.

I had some more conversations about learning spaces, for further scoping and research.

I continued with the Senior Education and Student Experience Group logistics and preparation for our meeting in December and further meetings next year.

I also continued with my preparation and planning for events in Scotland and Germany in November.

I did a quick skim of the OfS Blended Learning Review, might spend some time on this next week.

My top tweet this week was this one.

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Visiting the See Monster – Weeknote #189 – 14th October 2022

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See Monster

On Monday evening I went up an old North Sea gas rig on the seafront of Weston-super-Mare. The See Monster is an art installation. It certainly is an interesting place.

Tuesday I was in Birmingham for a team away day. A bit of double booking, late trains for people and other stuff, meant that it wasn’t as constructive as I hoped it would be. However, we did an excellent communication exercise which I really found illuminating.

Wednesday I was in Birmingham at the ICC for the Jisc Staff Conference. Nice to see people from across Jisc in-person. Some useful sessions and some fun ones as well.

Thursday I was down to London for a meeting with a Finnish delegation from the CSC, which is a NREN (like Jisc). Colleagues and myself presented on the work of Jisc across the UK and answered questions on various aspects of our work.

Friday I was working from home. I spent time sorting out stuff from the week in preparation for going on leave next week.

My top tweet this week was this one.

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Oncoming vehicle approaching – Weeknote #187 – 30th September 2022

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Was in London on Monday. I had gone up the night before, so I could avoid travelling on a Monday morning.

Monday was a team coaching day, where we did our insights (colours) thing. I think the most useful aspect is discussion and working together, as for the insights I am always reminded of horoscopes.

Monday evening, I couldn’t see Jupiter as it was cloudy, saw it last week and later in the week, but not on the day it was the closest to the earth in 107 years.

On Tuesday I presented at the GuildHE Policy and Planners Network meeting in London on analytics and student support. This was well received presentation and there was lots of questions and discussion afterwards.

Wednesday I was back in Bristol. I had a constructive meeting on the marketing, event, production requirements for the HE objectives assigned to me, and how these will fit into the planning and campaign processes for 2022-23. We also discussed transformative content (thought leadership) and the planning I have done on producing transformative content that will support the delivery of the HE sector strategy and ensuring it is aligned to the Jisc core strategy.

Read this HEPI blog post at the weekend. The blog says

There is a tendency for the literature to connect innovation and technology in discussions about models of change. Clearly, technology can have a significant impact on activities and practice and can lead to innovation but, if badly designed or implemented, can create unnecessary costs and additional bureaucracy. The key to good innovation is that it leads to better productivity; better work practice; and better delivery of activities. In planning any change, it is important to understand how the innovation that you wish to introduce will deliver those three things: better productivity, better practice and better delivery. 

You could almost rewrite this and replace the word innovation with transformation. It goes onto say:

Innovation is also often seen as a big bang ‘thing’. This is not necessarily the case, small improvements or minor changes can have significant effects…

I was reminded of my butterfly post on digital transformation.

Do you think transformation is something that has a result (we’ve been transformed) or do you see it as an evolving continuing process (we are transforming and continue to transform)?

The Mirror reports that University of Glasgow students are unhappy about having lectures in a church with no internet access.

Though it was July 2015 when Apple Pay was introduced in the UK, I have never actually used it until August this year! I bought some parking on my phone and used Apple Pay to pay for it. It was only on Thursday that I actually used Apple Pay at a till! I paid for some shopping using the system at one of those “unexpected item in the bagging area” machines.

I know I should know this, but it was quite a seamless experience. I did have to double tap, which I didn’t think I would need to do. Well done that now, do I need to do it again? Probably not.

Friday I headed to work in our Bristol office. Had some administration to do as well as catching up with conversations and email.

Why is this post entitled oncoming vehicle approaching? Well when I was driving to London, I did see a fair few warning signs, that there was an oncoming vehicle approaching. I wasn’t sure how much I should slow down by, as there were cars behind and next to me. I wasn’t sure even which lane I should stick to, as I had no idea about the oncoming vehicle, would it be in the outside lane, or on the hard shoulder? There were a lot of unknowns and in the end I tried to ensure that I had plenty of options for moving out of the way, just in case. I never did see the vehicle, but it was quite unnerving. Writing this, it reminded me of how some people feel when it comes to the implementation and embedding of digital technology. People may be unsure of what to do and it might be all bit unnerving as they are doing what they normally do and now they are facing uncertainty.

My top tweet this week was this one.

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Back from leave – Weeknote #181 – 19th August 2022

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Well after two weeks leave it was back to work, and 179 emails in my inbox. I used an Inbox Zero approach and cleared them out before the end of the day. I left the emails form mailing lists in their folders and marked all as read.

Went to London for me end of year review having finished off the preparation for this earlier in the week. This is where these weeknotes can be useful for reminding me of the different things I have done and events I have attended.

I wrote a blog post on culture, strategy and croissant and strategy implementation.

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast” is a famous quote from management consultant and writer Peter Drucker. Reflecting on this quote though, I did start to think about breakfast, and wondered if I could use breakfast as an analogy for effective strategy implementation. As well as strategic objectives, what else do people need to know in order to deliver those objectives successfully.

I had a fair few cancelled meetings and sessions this week. Not too surprising as these were often planned when people were on leave and then other priorities take precedence.

I was in Harwell on Thursday and saw the autonomous self driving bus they have there. It had got slightly confused on one of the roundabouts.

Thursday was A Level results week and the press was packed with news stories about the results. I was reminded that I had written this blog post in 2017, You too can be a millionaire!

I was asked about the future of learning and the role of technology, and I referred back to a piece I wrote on the duality of digital teaching.

When we talk about online and in-person many of us think of this as a dichotomy, either we are online, or we are in-person. The reality is though as we know, that this can be more of a spectrum, a range of possibilities, with varying depths to which online or digital can be embedded into an in-person experience.

My top tweet this week was this one.